First Edition: 334 pages, frontispiece portrait, folding map, 37 illustrations, simply rebound in half maroon leather with marbled paper sides, black and green title labels on the spine, top edge dyed maroon, other edges foxed, contents clean, bookplate on front paste-down endpaper.
From the preface: 'The true spirit of the prospector is that he must love his work or he will never succeed in it. I have had men out there who were good enough theoretically to cope with the misadventures they had to encounter, and soon gave up the life for something easier. I have had others to whom the glamour of a life spent in the wilds with the sands for a couch and the stars for a ceiling outweighed all its little disadvantages.'
Cornell describes his expeditions through Namaqualand, the Richtersveld, the lower Orange River and the southern Kalahari, recording in considerable detail the landscape, mineral prospects, wildlife, indigenous peoples and hardships of travel. Notable are his accounts of Alexander Bay, the Great Falls of the Orange, the Kalahari pans and the German frontier at Nakob. The final chapters provide a contemporary account of the frontier immediately before and at the outbreak of the First World War.
- Size: 8vo (220 x 150 mm)
